Saw a Halo

Here on their Load debut, the noisy Brooklyn guitar/drums/electronics duo hold firm to what made them innovative and interesting while managing to make their sound new and forceful all over again.

The stateside fringes The Wire's David Keenan collectively dubbed New Weird America only four years
ago sounded a bit different this different year. More melody, more cohesion,
and-- for better and worse-- less chaos: In 2007, several of the bands earmarked in
Keenan's wide menagerie came closer to home to roost, at least temporarily.
Magik Markers made a piano-heavy record of damaged torch songs, and Marker
Elisa Ambrogio sang sweetly with beau Ben Chasny on his latest, Six Organs of
Admittance's Shelter from the Ash.
Sunburned Hand of the Man proved vivacious beneath the editing touch of British
fan Kieran "Four Tet" Hebden, while Massachusetts brethren MV & EE washed
Neil Young's Decade in lye soap.
Devendra Banhart sounded like a 17-year-old with a Lyrichord crush, and Animal
Collective continued to hem the noise inside the pop. And a year after
releasing a 12-song, 51-minute rock
album, Sonic Youth covered Bob Dylan, while Thurston Moore released a largely
acoustic album under his forename and Kim Gordon portrayed an aging folksinger
in I'm Not There.Oh, and there's Mouthus, the Brooklyn-based,
guitar/drums/electronics noise duo of Brian Sullivan and Nate Nelson.
For their Load Records debut, Saw a Halo, Sullivan and Nelson landed a mostly perfect album. Though known for
electricity and abrasion, Mouthus added acoustic guitars for three of the
record's seven tracks. Surprise, surprise.

Acoustic guitar excepted, the success of Saw a Halo depends largely on the same elements as the rest of
Mouthus' 10 LPs since 2002. The duo's sound still pivots on manipulation. Nelson's drums can sound like traditional traps one minute or dim,
percussive clicks the next, and guitarist Sullivan can (but rarely does) twist
through a bona fide solo or use his instrument just as an input for pedals and
as an outlet for cacophonous textures. Fascinating but vaguely familiar sounds
have always been paramount to Mouthus' appeal, as has gumption. Mouthus' most
riveting moments have come when Sullivan and Nelson attacked a motif or
incidental sound with gusto, pushing everything to be louder, bigger, more
daring. On Saw a Halo, they do
that seven times.

But Mouthus is controlled and composed here, too, and that's
the linchpin. Saw a Halo adds structural
smarts to sonic iconoclasm as it moves through big arcs lined with micro-plots
of clashing sounds. By the time Sullivan lets an eight-minute shrill solo
collapse to a feedback-and-percussion din on closer "The Gift of Sighs", that
arc is exhausting and cathartic. Something about it feels like high drama: The
secret is order, with seven trackssplit
into two sides (you'll notice seven seconds of silence after track four if
you're tuning in digitally). Those track markers may seem arbitrary, jokes of
sorts amid a persistent, unflinching, even monotonous noise.

But the meticulous Mouthus demands attention. Each track
shift here represents a significant sonic event buried within the squall, and
each new idea drains into the next. Opener "Your Far Church", for instance, is
a broken, somber ballad of strummed acoustics and multi-tracked vocals,
steadily battered from beneath by an undercurrent of clattering drums.They sweep up, digesting and
reorganizing the surroundings like a vortex. Track two begins, and leftover
vocals are pushed beneath a sharp static gale and stabbed by bursts of guitar
feedback. The rhythm mutates constantly.When the shard falls into a deep fryer and its thin,
penetrating tone suddenly becomes thick and bludgeoning, track three begins.
The drums submit, biding the roar's orders and building into a militaristic,
cymbal-and-tom regimen. When the beat finally disappears, the thick static
tires of itself. Track four begins, and sheets of sound whittle away into
beautiful undercurrents that float like a perfect post-rock comedown. Except then
Mouthus come back up, smearing a tampered tribal rhythm with sharp feedback
and spectral whispers. Side two does the same, and-- be forewarned-- the close is
completely devastating.

On Saw a Halo,
Mouthus has done what is so difficult for so many bands: They've held firm to
what made them innovative and interesting, but they've poured it into a shape
that makes it new and forceful all over again. Mouthus were great as early as
2005's Slow Globes; now-- with
mastery over some of the most daunting sounds coming out of experimental
circles in 2007-- they're mostly peerless.